The UL system is the largest in the state, enrolling almost 94,000 students last year. But the state's allocation to the system has repeatedly fallen since 2008-09, the last year Louisiana's contribution to higher education reached the Southern average. For 2012-13 alone, the UL system is losing $33.6 million in state funding compared to the previous year.

Gov. Bobby Jindal and lawmakers gave colleges the ability to more easily raise tuition, yet the UL system expects to get $5 million less this year in tuition and fees, in part because of a reduced enrollment. University leaders have said higher tuitions are partly to blame for fewer students enrolling. That shows tuition increases are unlikely to solve the system's fiscal problems.

The real solution would be to consolidate a higher education system, including community colleges, that lawmakers rapidly expanded before the 2008 recession.

Legislators took a modest step toward streamlining the system this spring, approving a merger of six campuses of the Northeast Louisiana Technical College with Louisiana Delta Community College. The move is intended to enhance services and programs, making the schools more efficient.

But a more substantial proposal to merge Louisiana Tech in Ruston and Louisiana State University at Shreveport failed to gather enough votes in the Legislature. Opposition from LSU System officials doomed the proposal.

The likely layoffs and program cuts at the LSU System and the University of Louisiana System, however, should make it clear that shrinking the state's higher education footprint is the best long-term solution.